Pumpkin Carving : How This Diamondback Fan Plans to Show My Displeasure

Recently the Arizona Diamondbacks announced yet another contest on their web site. With Halloween soon approaching, the team is holding a pumpkin carving contest . Fans are being asked to create a D-Backs themed pumpkin.

Once carved simply take a photo of your Diamondbacks pumpkin and send it to the team. The deadline of the contest is a minute before midnight this Wednesday October 28, 2009. The winning entry will be featured on the Diamondbacks web site and the winning sculptor will receive an autographed Brandon Webb jersey.

The prize makes it especially tempting to enter the contest. I mean who wouldn’t want an autographed jersey from starting pitcher Brandon Webb. The problem is that no matter how many of these contests I enter I never seem to win.

I’m starting to develop an inferiority complex. Not to the magnitude of being a Chicago Cubs fan but nonetheless I am starting to feel a little inadequate when it comes to these contests. I’m sort of waffling back and forth trying to decide whether to enter.

So I started contemplating what kind of Diamondbacks themed pumpkin I would carve if I decided to enter the contest. The team offers pumpkin stencils available for download from their web site. That seems to lack a certain level of creativity by just using a pre-existing stencil.

At first I thought about carving a pumpkin that would somehow capture the feelings Diamondbacks fans felt following the team during the 2009 season. I figured the perfect pumpkin for that would be the picture of the vomiting pumpkin that seems to go around the Internet every year at this time.

That could also work as a Conor Jackson pumpkin considering he spent nearly the whole 2009 season on the disabled list with Valley Fever. Along the same lines I considered carving a pumpkin with only one arm and putting number 17 on its back. I’m not really sure the Diamondbacks are looking for a satirical pumpkin to represent the team on their web site.

For a moment I considered going to the Los Angeles Dodgers web site to see if they were having a similar contest. I would love carving number 99 on a pumpkin with a hypodermic needle sticking out of the side. I could even carve “Manny Being Barry” on the pumpkin. Somehow I think I would be the only person who would think that was funny.

I finally settled on a design. I would create a pumpkin man similar to a snowman stacking three pumpkins on top of each other. On the middle pumpkin I would carve “Beat LA” with scratch marks across the chest.

The face would be filled with anger and terror. Using sticks for arms I would carve another pumpkin removing the orange rind leaving just the meaty flesh of a shredded head hanging on the stick.

I could litter the ground around the pumpkin man with pieces of pumpkin guts. It seemed perfect. I took my finished drawings into the kitchen to share them with my wife and kids. One look at my drawings and the glimmer in my eye and the family hid all sharp objects thereby killing any hopes I had of entering the contest.

Thinking about it, reminiscing about the 2009 Diamondbacks season while holding a sharp instrument in my hand has suicide attempt written all over it.